The overall goal of the Research Center on Oral Health in Aging (RCOHA), henceforth called Oral Health: San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging (OH:SALSA), is to investigate questions which have relevance in the maintenance of oral health, oral function, and quality of life, as well as the underlying factors of oral disease in older population groups. We strive to accomplish this by 1) using 840 Mexican American and non- Hispanic white subjects 65-80+ years old from the San Antonio Longitudinal Study of Aging and a comparison group of 840 subjects 32-64 years old from the population-based San Antonio Heart Study which is the parent group of SALSA; and by 2) assembling a set of multidisciplinary basic and clinical investigators who bring varying backgrounds and state-of-the-art methodology into a research environment that spurs creative and efficient scientific endeavors. Individuals have been chosen to participate because of the quality of their ongoing scientific inquiry, their standing among peers, and their research horizons into new areas of study. OH:SALSA [tying together research interests from The University of Texas Health Science Center at San Antonio (UTHSCSA) and Audie L. Murphy Memorial Veterans Hospital] will be physically housed in the Dental School. It will consist of an Administrative Core, a SAHS/SALSA Research Resource Core, and an Epidemiology Assessment Core. These 3 cores will provide common and central subject management, data collection, and data management for OH:SALSA investigators and provide them with support personnel and expertise to facilitate their research objectives. The Administrative Core will provide the focal point for interaction of Center participants and provide them with creative approaches to solving research problems. The long-range goal of OH:SALSA is to provide the dental profession the scientific basis to address clinically relevant questions regarding the oral health of older population groups. This defines its underlying themes--1) that changes in oral physiology with age act as a substrate upon which oral pathology can occur and 2) scientific information regarding the oral health of an older population should be transferred to the clinician to be applied to diagnosis and patient care.